DuiK elbows!!

I am so wonderfully in love with DuiK, the Inverse Kinematics tool developed by Duduf and have used it for years now but I keep forgetting the 'elbow' frustration and was wondering if anyone had found the same and had managed a workaround?

Essentially the IK works a treat in creating comprehensive jointed puppets but when moving the hands (to move the arms) there are points where I would like to adjust the placing of the elbow which has its rotation locked into the most amazing ream of scripting which I just can't unpick!

I've noticed that Duduf's updated his site so I'm going to pop in and see if this has been evolved but was wondering if anyone else had come to the same problem (and solved it!!)

Hey! I know this was posted a while ago but I'm going to put up the solution I've found as I was looking this morning for an answer to this and there is very little on the interwebs about it. If you make a regular IK Chain,ie. puppet pin you arm in shoulder,elbow and wrist, select the layer and hit bones, parent wrist to elbow and elbow to shoulder click your wrist null and create a controller for it, select shoulder,elbow,wrist nulls along with wrist controller and hit IK. Once this is complete and you have a normal ik chain, duplicate the elbow controller and rename it elbow manipulator or whatever you want. Delete all the Ik in the effects panel, rotation and position and then match the position and rotation of the original elbow controller. Select your new elbow controller go to solid settings and make it twice as big pixel wise as your original so you can easily differentiate between the two. Parent this new controller to the original elbow controller with all the ik junk in it. Go into your puppet pins on your arm and in the elbow puppet pin rename the target in the expressions from the original elbow controller to your new one. Now you will still have all your original IK functionality with the addition of being able to freely move the elbow. Hope this helps.

Did a search for this AGE OLD problem and found this thread which I actually started! How funny!

Daniel... This sounds so super exciting but I can't seem to get your instructions working... halfway through you mention an 'elbow controller' but I can't find where you mention creating this. I don't suppose you could clarify?

Shall keep re-reading and seeing if I can get it working. If it does then you are an absolute star!!!

Thank you so much for that tutorial, that was extremely thoughtful to record.

I cannot tell you how much you have changed my life - it works and it is absolutely brilliant. I wonder why Duduf hasn't implemented this as part of the script as it sorts out so many problems. My characters can now drink things!!

I watched you're video and I understand your solution for a IK rigged arm. However I'm flat out not good enough with expressions to understand how to take this technique and adapt it to an auto rigged arm.

In my project my character needs to move its limbs in a more realistic fashion (i.e. not rubber hose and bendy limbs). How can I create an IK elbow goal for an auto-rigged character. I need elbows and knees to have a controller that lets me adjust their orientation just as a 3D rigged character would have.

Using an auto rig makes it so I don't make puppet points, I just simple pre comp all the body parts, adjust their anchor point where I want it to pivot and bend and it just spits out controllers with no exact bone/controller on the elbow itself. So I can't replicate what you did in your video tutorial, as well as the expression on the controller/parts is not the same syntax as what I see in your video so I don't know where to replace words.

Could a step by step explanation be written out for me or a video tutorial of how to make an elbow/knee goal for an auto rigged bi-ped human? I can't find anything online about how to do this in AE and DUIK but it's so simple in a 3D application.